Page 354 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

READING LESSONS.
353
6. But I have been attempting sketches of the largest and most rtile valley in the world, larger, in ct, than half of Europe, all its remotest points being brought into proximity by a stream, which runs the length of that continent, and to which a but two or three of the rivers of Europe are but rivulets. Its rests make a respectable gure, even placed beside Blenheim park.
7. We have lakes which could nd a place r the Cumberland lakes in the hollow of one of their islands. We have prairies, which have struck me as among the sublimest prospects in nature. There we see the sun rising over a boundless plain, where the blue of the heavens, in all directions, touches and mingles with the verdure of the owers. It is to me a view r more glorious than that on which the sun rises over a barren and angry waste of sea. The one
is soft, cheer l, associated with li , and requires an easier e ort of the imagination to travel beyond the eye. The other is grand, but dreary, desolate, and always ready to destroy.
8. In the most pleasing positions of these prairies, we have our Indian mounds, which proudly rise above the plain. At i:st the eye mistakes them r hills; but, when it catches the regularity of their breast-works and ditches, it discovers at once that they are the labours of art and of men.
9. When the evidence of the senses convinc us that human bones moulder in these masses; when yo dig about them, and bring to light their domes­ tic utensils; and are compelled to believe that the busy tide of li once owed here, when you see at once that these races were of a very di erent char­
acter om the present generation,-yon begin to in-
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